Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Wolf plan 'deceitful,' cattlemen say (Oh yeah, right)

Tuesday, August 09, 2011

By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press

Washington's proposed wolf management plan is "deceptive and
deceitful" and sets a stage of conflict with livestock producers and
hunters, the head of the Washington Cattlemen's Association says.
Jack Field, association executive vice president, said he told the
state Fish and Wildlife Commission that and asked commissioners to
revise the plan.
As a member of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife's Wolf
Working Group drafting the plan for the past three years, Field said he
tried to work with the department but is frustrated by a final product
that lacks common sense.

"It's not (deceptive and deceitful). We've been upfront and
transparent about this plan from day one with the working group and the
public," said Madonna Luers, department spokeswoman.
Department staff presented the plan to commissioners on Aug. 4. Field
was among 25 people, each allowed three minutes to speak during public
comment.
Livestock producers and hunters need to make their voices of
opposition heard at remaining public meetings and as much as possible
before the commission is scheduled to act Dec. 2 and 3, Field said the
next day.
Public meetings are tentatively scheduled for Aug. 29 in Ellensburg and Oct. 6 and Nov. 3 in Olympia.
The plan protects gray wolves until their population reaches 15
breeding pair for three years. Then state delisting and limited hunting
may be considered.

Early on the department said cattle and sheep grazing land would not
be counted in wolf habitat because they are not compatible, but in
drafting the plan cattle acreage was counted as habitat, Field said.
Commissioner Conrad Mahnken, a retired fisheries biologist, noted that incongruity, Field said.
Luers said cattle grazing land was not included per se but that land
too close to sheep and to human population centers was kept out.
Wolves are habitat generalists and only need something to eat and
people to leave them alone, she said. The department looked at density
of forest and elk and location of human population and sheep in
determining habitat, she said.

Commissioners also asked how the department was counting 26,700
square miles of wolf habitat, virtually the same as Idaho and Montana,
which have far smaller human populations, Field said.
Michigan has 3 million more people and 500 more wolves than
Washington and half the wolf habitat and its plan works relatively well,
Luers said.
Commissioners questioned if 15 breeding pair is enough to establish a
viable wolf population, Field said. The plan contains no wolf
population cap, he said. It only says the department may consider
limited hunting -- it doesn't require it -- when 15 breeding pair have
been sustained for three years, he said. It would take another year to
get any hunting approved, he said.

A breeding pair includes 14 wolves so 15 pair equals 210 wolves, he
said. At a 24 percent growth rate the department considers acceptable
there could be 500 wolves consuming 5,275 elk or 71 percent of the
annual allowable elk hunter harvest by the time wolf hunting is allowed,
Field said.
"The department says wolves will only kill sick and weak elk, but I
don't buy that and I hope sportsmen don't either," Field said. "If
wolves take more elk than the department's population objectives, then
hunter harvest will have to go down."

The department had said lethal take, shooting wolves, would be a
management tool, but now says it can't be used in the western two-thirds
of the state where the gray wolf remains listed as a federally
endangered species, Field said. So there's no way to remove wolves there
that chronically depredate livestock, he said.
"That's a slap in the face to stakeholders (who worked on the plan)
because it says there will be no management and cross your fingers,"
Field said.
The department talks about relocating problem wolves but that requires federal review, he said.
The department has always said it can't vary from federal law in
areas of federal listing, Luers said. The plan now allows lethal take of
wolves caught attacking livestock in the eastern part of the state, she
said.
Some people in the working group didn't like that being allowed and
think there should be far more than 15 breeding pair, Luers said.

"We've got it (criticism and opposition) coming from both sides and
we fully expect that," she said. "Jack has been a valuable member of the
group, representing an industry with a lot at stake. He helped us
address some management tools. People need to read the plan."

The film offers an abbreviated history of the relationship between wolves and people—told from the wolf’s perspective—from a time when they coexisted to an era in which people began to fear and exterminate the wolves.

The return of wolves to the northern Rocky Mountains has been called one of America’s greatest conservation stories. But wolves are facing new attacks by members of Congress who are gunning to remove Endangered Species Act protections before the species has recovered.

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Inescapably, the realization was being borne in upon my preconditioned mind that the centuries-old and universally accepted human concept of wolf character was a palpable lie... From this hour onward, I would go open-minded into the lupine world and learn to see and know the wolves, not for what they were supposed to be, but for what they actually were.

-Farley Mowat, Never Cry Wolf

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“If you look into the eyes of a wild wolf, there is something there more powerful than many humans can accept.” – Suzanne Stone